Ground Zero Mosque Imam: US Bloodier Than al-Qaida
Tuesday, 24 Aug 2010 01:58 PM
The imam at the center of the debate over the mosque and Islamic center being built near ground zero said the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has in its murder of non-Muslims, according to a provocative new tape that has surfaced on the Internet. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the effort to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, told an Australian audience in July 2005 that U.N sanctions against Iraq had led to the death of more than 500,000 children.
But the group that procured the tape, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, counters in its fact check that studies have generally showed no more than 50,000 deaths could be attributed to the sanctions, which were brought on by the dictator Saddam Hussein.
In a taped speech now available online, Rauf makes a number of statements that would seem to counter his image as a moderate in the U.S. Muslim community.
"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims,” he says at one point. “You may remember that the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it."
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